Advaita: Beyond monotheism and polytheism – Times of India

Very recently I had to suffer a management seminar trying what seems to be the new fad amongst the management Gurus, i.e., linking (and whereby insulting) the Indian scriptures and philosophical ideas with wealth creation.

Initially, I was a bit sympathetic to this development as I felt that it introduced the young Indian citizens to what their education system has tried hard to keep them away from, but lately I am developing my doubt, for a simple reason.

Most of the key Indian philosophical ideas are untranslatable in English purely because Sanskrit and English are languages of different cultures that had very little in common.

One is/was a language of Advaita and other has evolved to deal with the needs of a culture based on the virtue of selfishness, so English never had the need to imbibe the ideas that Indian philosophies had evolved forcing Sanskrit to deal with them and forge equivalent words to communicate them.

I wont describe this as a lacuna of either, but I see that now we have a problem looming ahead, and that is people trying to translate Indic words like Karma, Moksha, Maya and also Advaita, the word that has pinched my writing nerve today.

The Guru that I was listening to translated Advaita as monotheism, and I understand that it is a well-accepted translation that is now used to describe a concept that, for me, is everything but monotheism.

As we all are now very busy discussing religions, especially on social media, the monotheism and its presumed counterpart, polytheism are used to distinguish between some of the major religions. i.e., Islam and even Christianity are referred to being monotheist or One-God religions, while Hinduism is insulted on multiple counts by referring to it as a religion and that too polytheist or having-many-Gods.

As it is not safe to discuss any religion other than Hinduism, I will skirt the monotheists, as these religions are not exactly mono (one) in nature. They divide the humanity into two parts, i.e., the believers and non-believers, so they actually recognise and also forge a duality of us and them, with them, the outsiders not really qualifying for anything.

If I return to the safer pastures of discussing Hinduism, erroneously referred to as a polytheist religion, the two words that hold the centre-stage are Advaita and its counter or corollary as per your choice, Dvaita.

What is broadly described as Hinduism are various ways of life built around on the Advaita or Dvaita based description of the universe. As it is impossible to tackle a debate that had once lasted for more than a thousand years in Bharat, I will not take up differentiating Advaita and Dvaita here, but instead ponder over an idea that is probably the most counterintuitive one ever explored by a human mind.

To translate Advaita as monotheism is a travesty for me, as it insults one of the most incredible hypotheses ever proposed by humanity to describe the true nature of reality/existence.

The problem with monotheism is that it recognises existence of a God, that Advaita completely and totally rejects. In fact, Advaita actually rejects everything along with accepting everything, making it impossible to behold for any (unprepared) human brain.

The closest we can get to Advaita in terms of theism-translation can be null-theism, but that too only for the sake of saving the word from distortion that is harming it today.

Advaita stands alone.

If you can grasp its meaning, everything dissolves, you and the reality.

It is not a word comprehensible for the western or rational mind that is trained to consider knowledge as a way of differentiating between things. The Gyana that helps one to understand Advaita is exactly opposite to the idea of knowledge as described by the rationalism of west.

The post-renaissance notion of knowledge that classifies everything, separates reality into parts and then tries to study the cause-and-effect relationships between these parts is actually Agyana when looked through the lens of Advaita.

Advaita is a recognition of the ultimate truth that this differentiation that human mind conjures up is caused by Maya (another untranslatable word that will need more than a thousand words to touch upon).

Be it Advaita or many such words found in Indian philosophies, there is a dire need to NOT force-fit them into English, as if they get distorted (as they already are getting), it will lead to destruction of an amazing school of thought explored by humanity.

These words are a cultural heritage not just for Hindus, they belong to the humanity at large. The best way to preserve them is to leave them alone or discuss them within the context of the schools of thoughts that explored them.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Advaita: Beyond monotheism and polytheism - Times of India